Article Tools

A volunteer with the National Park Service was killed last Wednesday after he fell from a dock ladder on Anacapa Island. Joe Wysocki, 65, was trying to board the National Park Service (NPS) boat Ocean Ranger at about 3:15 pm when he fell and sustained a serious head injury, said NPS spokesperson Yvonne Menard.

Joe Wysocki

Wysocki was pulled from the water, loaded onto the boat, and airlifted by a Ventura County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue helicopter to an area hospital. Despite resuscitative efforts, Wysocki was declared dead at approximately 4:00 p.m.

An audio visual technician and camera operator for the park’s Channel Island Live education program, Wysocki had been a volunteer for the Channel Islands National Park since November 2011. He spent his career working as a physicist at a research lab in Malibu and in his free time enjoyed sailing, boating, and diving. The day he was killed, Wysocki and his crew made two live broadcasts to students watching informative talks about island biology and ecology from their school computers.

“Joe was a part of the National Park Service family,” said Menard. “We’re grieving, and our thoughts go out to all of his family and friends. Joe was intelligent, committed; we miss his personality and all his contributions.”

Though getting on and off Anacapa Island’s landing dock can be somewhat tricky and dangerous — visitors are required to step from an unanchored vessel onto an open steel ladder, timing the step or short jump to compensate for the movement of a lurching boat — Menard said this was the first major accident at the location in recent memory. Public boats are able to back up to the ladder, but larger NPS boats offload from the side, she explained.

The ocean on the day of the accident was glassy and calm with about a foot of swell, Menard said. On rougher days, she said, the wind and waves can whip into the cove from the northwest and make loading and unloading more difficult.

[CLARIFICATION: Portions of the above article involve observations based on the reporter’s first-hand experience at Anacapa Island and are not based on comments from National Park Service spokesperson Yvonne Menard. Specifically, Menard did not call the landing dangerous, but did state that this was the first known accident of any kind on this specific ladder.]

How petty and ignorant of the above commentators. The guy was KILLED. he wasn't born, he wasn't healed, he wasn't spoken to, he was KILLED. In an accident. It's common to express such an event as "killed ". You two take the cake. I won't get into the details of headline writing, and layout- you two ideological zealotss might take it as a conspiracy.

He wasn't killed, he DIED. End of story. People are born, they grow up, they get old, and if they're lucky, they die "doing what they love best". Good lord, turn of the violin music and go for a walk or something.

I'm surprised they didn't try use his "tragic" death as some sort of "cautionary" tale to warn us to never venture to the "dangerous channel islands. Yes, let's all stay home and die in bed from old age and the drizzling sh*its!

Since there was a direct cause that KILLED him, it is quite valid to write that the poor man was "killed". It means the very same thing as "died while". How much more morinic can you get to nitpick over it.

Of course you invite the observation that if anybody is responsible for this tragic death, it's Teapublicans who contunue to give tax cuts to billionaires thus underfunding such entities as the Nt'l Park Service.

So "Killed in a car accident" ring a bell to anyone? I can't believe you folks are taking issue with the headline under these circumstances. But since you are, you can at least "google" this part of the sentence to see the myriad ways that the word "killed" is used in headlines around the world when an accident occurs. "Toddler killed in lawn mowing accident", "Seven people killed in a car accident"....

I'm still waiting to hear who was the Killer or perpetrator of this heinous crime to kill a volunteer of the Parks Department for what?. Money, pleasure, to send a message to the President, ?More like it, the man died from what? Did he strike his head on the boat, the dock, the rung of the ladder, the pylon, the bumper guard of the pylon, or was it some other head to hard object strike?Poor usage of words to denote the mans demise.